In Naples, the furor over "Kick A Jew Day" continues

Maybe you've been paying attention to this growing controversy. Maybe not. Either way, it might be instructive to take a look at what's happening in southwest Florida, in the wealthy retirement enclave of Naples.

On November 19, a few students at North Naples Middle School, inspired by an episode of TV's "South Park," instigated a self-proclaimed "Kick A Jew Day" at the school. The students, two of whom themselves are Jewish, kicked a number of other students; it appears that they did not specifically target Jewish students but, rather, students who were "different."

“What the school found out is that it wasn’t ‘kick a Jew day.’ It was a ‘kick a fill-in-the-blank day,’” [Collier County school superintendent Dennis] Thompson said. “Many of the kids who kicked other students kicked someone they didn’t like or someone who is different. The kid who was kicked the most was new to the school. That, to me, is the tragedy. These kids picked on someone who was new to the school.”

The new student is not Jewish.

Thompson said it is unfortunate that one student was kicked for being Jewish but it seems to be an isolated case. He added that all of the students who were suspended had never been in trouble before.

“This is certainly not about religious intolerance. This is about, do you know who your child is communicating with? Do you know who your child is communicating about? The real lesson is that we need to understand what our kids watch and who they communicate with,” he said.

The students involved were disciplined with in-school suspension for one day, and the superintendent says this isn't about religious intolerance. Before reading articles about the incident, I was inclined to agree, knowing only that non-Jewish students were victims of the bullying as well. But then I read about the "South Park" episode in question --which featured Eric Cartman kicking "gingers," or red-haired kids, and I began to wonder how that morphed into "Kick A Jew Day." It certainly seems to suggest that religious intolerance plays more than a passing role in the genesis of this incident, doesn't it, Mr. Superintendent?

But you really only need go as far as the comments to the latest article about the incident to see that intolerance is a significant issue, at least among observers of the controversy (some of whom, it should be noted, do not live in Naples or even in Florida). Comment after comment suggests that this is just "something kids do" and that since the superintendent said it wasn't about religious, everyone should just shut the hell up:

Sounds like a witch hunt in the making to me! If the issue were anything else than hypersensitivity to the word "Jew",this would not even be newsworthy. How long will this "Holocaust mania" continue to cloud peoples minds that there are other people, other religions and cultures or no religious preferences at all that are just as important as those of the Jewish faith? Would "Kick a Muslim Day" be just as dramatic? As was stated by both the article and a previous poster this had absolutely NOTHING to do with raligion or culture? Get it?

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Who cares? What a bunch of whiners. Only the rich Jews would get all this attention.

Pack up and move back to New York. This news isn't kosher.

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Kids don't pay attention to the religion of others unless their parents brain wash them.

Facts: There was 2 Jewish kids kicking others too. If you read all the facts, it looks like some kids were horsing around and kicking each other... no matter if they were Jewish or not.

It was the MEDIA that picked out the phrase "Kick a Jew Day" that would sell newspapers... and the MEDIA made an issue of the ONE PHRASE. It is the Naples News that created this problem!!

What are you going to do? Put the kids in jail for horsing around on the playground?

How come no issue is made by the media when kids single out the FAT kids... or the SHORT kids... or the ITALIAN kids... or the MEXICAN kids... or the WHITE TRASH kids... or the BLACK kids or the NERD kids?

Kids can be mean to each other for no reason other than there is nothing else to do at the moment.

It is the fault of the Naples News that this playground horse play got the worldwide attention it did. Do you feel proud of what you did Naples News by making the residents of Naples look like fools? ... just a question

Well, the simple fact is that this wasn't about fat kids or short kids or Italian kids or Mexican kids ... and it would have been just as newsworthy if it were. Instead, somewhere along the way, this prank evolved from mimicking a cartoon to focusing hatred on a particular ethnic group. The fact that two of the miscreants were members of that faith is completely irrelevant. So, where do you suppose kids (at least the ringleaders) are learning that sort of hate, hmmm?

One Collier County School Board member calls the incident a "hate crime." I don't know whether I'd go that far, but I do believe the district's response has been embarrassingly, even painfully tepid. It's a teachable moment ... but instead they appear to want to sweep it under the rug. And yet, in a town like Naples or an area like southwest Florida, I can't say I'm terribly surprised.

Wingnut tactic: when in doubt, intimidate

The right-wing in this country has been using intimidation as a means to their nefarious ends for decades. Whether it's poll taxes or literacy tests for voting back in the '50s and '60s, active intimidation at the voting sites as recently as last year, or threatening letters to voters and officials, trying to "scare" people is the wingnut trump card.

And they're doing it again in Naples, with the support and, likely, involvement of the crazed radicals at the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Naples mayor Bill Barnett recently joined a group called Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG), which seeks to rid America's cities of illegal weapons and to have gun owners comply with the law regarding registration and possession of firearms. The group, led by New York mayor Michael Bloomberg (a Republican), wants to work within the Second Amendment, recognizing a right to bear arms* but trying to ensure that the right is exercised legally.

More than a year and a half after Mayor Barnett joined MAIG, though, the NRA got wind of his involvement and sent out a "legislative alert" -- otherwise known as a "dog whistle," calling their followers to attack -- "warning" Naples citizens that their mayor was part of (gasp!) an anti-illegal-gun group. And predictably, the nutjobs who got the "alert" responded by confronting the mayor.

“I believe very strongly in the Constitution put forth by our forefathers, including the Second Amendment. I do not believe, for one minute, that Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his ‘MAIG’ group are doing what is best for the citizens of his community, and he is trying to expand the liberal New York mentality to the rest of the community,” Naples resident John H. Rothert said in a Sept. 14 letter to Barnett.

“As a member of NRA, I was sent notice that you have joined the group. Please don’t! What Mayor Michael Bloomberg is attempting to do fits right in with the extremely liberal establishment that is trying to get a choke hold on this country. I, for one, will not allow that to happen.”

Rothert wasn’t the only Naples resident to send Barnett an angry e-mail or letter about his decision to join.

Barnett’s office received hundreds of e-mails.

“I am saddened to learn of your enrollment in Gov. (sic) Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns. I can understand how you could consider this movement because of its title, which is very misleading,” Naples resident Wayne Jenkins said in a Sept. 10 e-mail to Barnett.

“I too, am opposed to illegal guns, but I also support lawful gun ownership of citizens. I would like to urge you to consider checking the facts, and if you agree with me that this is a disguised anti-gun organization, that you would withdraw your membership.”

That isn’t happening, Barnett said, even though the coalition has lost some members since the NRA began its campaign against the group.

Post said he was unsure how many of the 450 mayors have backed out of the organization, but said the coalition has continued to see its membership grow.

“I did this because I felt for the cause,” Barnett said.

A close cousin of intimidation, of course, is fear. Fear allows intimidation to be effective. And fear appears to be one thing Mayor Barnett doesn't feel in this instance, even if Neapolitans like John Rothert and Wayne Jenkins express their fear that their guns will be taken away (which they won't -- and can't) and that there's some "extreme liberal" takeover going on (which I would applaud, but which isn't happening). Even though the NRA has sent out the marching orders and their minions are responding, their intimidation tactics aren't working, and here's hoping they don't work.

The problem is that these ideological freaks, who see President Obama as evil incarnate and any attempt to regulate gun ownership as anti-American, have far too much of a voice in our country today. I urge Mayor Barnett and all members of MAIG to stand strong in the face of wingnuttery and recognize that these people, sadly, have a very skewed view of what's going on in our country today ... the kind of skewing that necessarily results from a steady diet of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.

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* I personally do not believe there is a constitutional basis for a right held by every citizen to own firearms, since the Second Amendment expressly makes such a right subject to the formation of a "well-regulated militia," but since that is how the courts presently interpret the Amendment, that's the law.

Deconstructing the wingnut view of health care reform

It's interesting sometimes, in limited doses, to see what the other side thinks about certain issues. Of course, usually it's very clear and you don't have to read any of the hate-driven garbage: you know, "Sotomayor bad, Buchanan good" or "Where's the birth certificate?" or "Don't tax me, bro!" But on an issue as complex as health care reform, even though it has the wingnuts in a tizzy, it's important to show them just where they are wrong in their analysis. And, naturally, they're wrong a lot.

I don't even mean this in terms of the standard GOP "I've got mine, screw you" mentality, the endemic selfishness that ultimately drives nearly all American conservatives today. Rather, I want to point out the inherent flaws in the argument from the Right, and to do so, I'll go to a part of Florida Blast Off! rarely covers: the largely wealthy, über-Republican southwest -- specifically Naples.

Today's example of wingnuttery from southwest Florida comes from Naples Daily News columnist Ed Farmer (left), who is trying to show us that he really doesn't agree with the fringe nutjobs who, driven nearly insane by the idea of a black president!!!!1!!eleven!!, are shouting down members of Congress at all these health care town halls -- honest, he doesn't! But, naturally, he's not very convincing.

They’re not throwing rotten vegetables at those town meetings about health care, are they?

They’re not throwing punches like members of the Japanese parliament, are they?

They’re not carrying swastikas, as the ever-embarrassing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed, are they?

And they’re not breaking the noses of town meeting moderators, the way a guy throwing a folding chair did to Geraldo Rivera on his TV talk show 20 years ago, are they? OK, forget this example.

Better yet, let's forget all those examples, Ed, because they all suck and they all miss the point. For starters, just because they're not throwing rotten vegetables or punches yet doesn't mean they won't. For Jeebus' sake, Ed, a guy in New Hampshire was openly carrying a pistol outside the president's town hall meeting just this week! Rotten vegetables are a convenient strawman, sure, but they kind of pale in comparison to bullets.

And as for your statement about Speaker Pelosi, Ed, well, you're just flat out wrong (nice respect for the speaker, by the way ... shouldn't you be embarrassed about your mistake?). Do you even do the slightest amount of fact-checking? Nazi imagery has been spotted at numerous town hall meetings, including swastikas. And even if you say, well, that one swastika (in Fort Collins, Colo.) had a circle and line through it, as if to say "No Nazis," first, the image was still there, and second, think less literally about swastikas -- maybe you'd prefer the picture (shown here, as seen on CNN) of President Obama with a Hitler mustache, displayed at a Michigan town hall. Face it, Ed: you blew it.

I have neither the time nor the energy to take apart the entire column, although it would be remarkably easy to do so. But I'll just make a couple of other points, Ed. You say:

Many Americans fear having the federal government making life-changing health care decisions rather than their own doctors. When the president made a reference to an elderly person just being given a pain pill rather than a state-of-the-art treatment, the remark scared some people. Their blood pressures rise when Pelosi talks about mobs and labels big insurance companies as immoral villains.

Ah, yes, a variation on the old "Many people say ..." canard. "Many people" (like, maybe, seven) also say that Ashton Kutcher is the greatest actor who ever lived, but that doesn't make it true.

Anyway, first of all, big insurance companies are immoral villains, Ed. We can argue about that another time, because I suppose that's a matter of opinion. But your first sentence there, about "the federal government making life-changing health care decisions rather than their own doctors," well, again, it's just flat out wrong. Doctors aren't making those decisions now, Ed -- insurance companies are! Surely you're not so naïve that you didn't know that?! And they're doing a piss-poor job of it, too. Under the president's plan, the government will have no more say in health care decisions than insurance companies have now, and indeed, it's likely to be a lot less. Get your facts straight, Ed, because until you do, you're just embarrassing yourself and your newspaper.

And finally, the whole idea of that frightening, big, scary federal government taking over, well, that just chaps you and your fellow wingnuts, doesn't it, Ed? But look at it this way: the government can't possibly do health care (or, really, anything else) worse than the private sector has. Let me be blunt: you had your chance with privatization when the Bush crime syndicate was in charge. And it was a colossal failure. The subprime mess, skyrocketing government spending, damage to the environment, and, yes, shitty health care all were results of deregulation under Drunky McStagger, and we're paying the price for it today. Hell, yes, I trust the government more than I do a bunch of insurance companies to make decisions on funding health care, and you know what else? I would be willing to pay more in taxes, even though I have health insurance, to let those less fortunate have health coverage as well. But I know you wingnuts don't do compassion ....

Anyway, Ed, thanks for the entertainment, but if you're going to come to the ballpark (to extend the metaphor in your column) on health care reform, you need to bring more than a Wiffle bat.